Twins analyst questions Guillen, Mauer motives

Ozzie Guillen often is credited for taking the heat off White Sox players by making himself the story, but does the manager instead create unnecessary distractions for his team?

That's what Dan Gladden, a former Minnesota Twins outfielder who serves as a Twins radio analyst, suggested Wednesday on "The Danny Mac Show" on WSCR-AM 670.

"What Ozzie does well is he deflects the critcism from the players and I think every good manager does that," Gladden said. "That's why he'll have those outbursts and some embarrassing moments at times. He's deflecting the criticism from the players and it's on him.

"But at the same time, it's almost like enough is enough, it gets old, we've heard this, we've seen this before. Keeping guys loose in the clubhouse ... let the players dictate and decide what kind of a clubhouse they want, (it) shouldn't be decided by the manager. He's won a World Series, you can't take that away from him, but I think it'd be distracting as a player."

Gladden also went so far as to question the dedication of Twins star Joe Mauer, who is slowly working his way back into playing shape while on a rehab assignment in Florida.

"If the guy says he's hurt, he's hurt. I'm never going to question that," said Gladden, who played for the Twins from 1987-91. "I could question somebody's rehab program as to if they say they're working hard at their rehab and I'm standing there watching him having been a player and having had to rehab broken bones, pulled quads, hamstrings and things like that. I know the process that goes into rehabbing those injuries and I think that's where people might question certain athletes as to, not the severity of the injury, but the rehab part of it and how hard are you working at it to get back in shape? So I don't have a problem with somebody getting hurt."

Gladden acknowledged that the Twins must tread lightly when it comes to their four-time All-Star and 2009 American League MVP.

"You've got to, I don't want to say sugarcoat it, but it's a fine line: He's your player, your $23-26 million guy and you're not going to bash him," Gladden said. "You gave him the money because he was a good player. The problem is, the good player in the first year of this eight-year deal isn't able to come out and perform right now due to injuries and a lot of people can speculate as to what happened in spring training. Did he come into camp or not in shape, did he work at it real hard in spring training? Those are the question marks.

"It didn't work out for him and then bilateral weakness popped up, which Joe adamently denies that that's what it was, people just keep talking about it. He had some leg problems, he wasn't in shape when he came in camp. He didn't have enough time in camp, I think he hurt his arm and that was the big deal, was that he had a little arm problem and rather than try to play through it, let's just shut him down and start over."